I am a little biased, however I think that if most magicians went to Giobbi first to learn card sleights,
it would save a lot of time and frustration. But it is very much like magicians, when they have a truly great course,
to refer to more obscure and frankly, more convoluted sources, for whatever the reason.

This does seem biased. John Carney's Carneycopia, The Book of Secrets, and Ed Marlos Revolutionary Card Technique should be on every cardman's shelf. I wouldn't call them convoluted. Giobbi's adaptations of others' tricks and sleights are excellent for sure and he explains them well, but they are still being learned through Giobbi's...lens? Filter? Which again, is fine because he is just great. But. I would recommend always going to the source. Wether it's Krenzel, Draun, Kort, Vernon, Marlo, etc.

I'm sure it's just me but I didn't find CC any easier to follow than several other classic books with the additional drawback of cost (especially for beginner who may not be ready to invest that much money into a hobby) compared to other beginner's classics.

The Side Steal Declassified - Paul Cummins's DVD is excellent, if anyone still has a DVD player.

Agree with that entirely.

To my mind, nothing beats an in-depth study of the Hugard (Braue) books - RRTCM, ECT, the Card Manipulation series (9 booklets combined over two books by Dover), EATCT and Buckley's Card Control. All of these aforementioned titles can be purchased by any budding Card Magic enthusiast, in the form of cheap as chips Dover publications. The wealth of material contained within, is enough to last anyone a lifetime.

I bought the Card College series shortly after the books were released. I took an instant dislike of, what to me anyway, appeared to be Roberto Giobbi's pompous style of writing. Don't ask me why, I just had the impression throughout the reading "my god, this guy really loves himself". There's also a lack of crediting in places - e.g. a complete rip-off of an Al Smith trick. Suffice to say, I sold them on to a member of a magic club I attended at that time.

I've said it before, in relation to my favourite book - Expert Card Technique. If this magnificent tome was released today; albeit by one of the hip and trendy names; it would be considered Underground Gold Dust. However, all of the aforementioned titles were written decades ago (plus they don't contain The Elmsley Count) so they can't be worthy of anyone's attention.......right?

I really appreciate MB's note on taking it easy and not rushing the move, it seems that Paul Cummins' execution affirms this.
Someone asked about a possible substitute for the side steal. A decent nominee would be the diagonal palm shift, Jason England has a great video on this. Also, Mike Powers, brilliant comment on how you would probably not choose to do the side steal with more than 5 cards or so, as Paul Cummins did on his video.

Ricky Smith has a great video on the DPS too.

Unfortunately I can't find any dvd or download of "Side Steal declassified". I think it is no longer available.

Carney had great work on it in his book,, Secrets